WAX: Tokenization and Use of Smart Contracts in Gaming Industry Are Inevitable

FL: What are the basic shortcomings of centralized platforms? How can blockchain solve all those problems?

Malcolm Cassel: Centralized markets are just expensive, and ensuring security is another pain in the neck. Considering the market consists of thousands of payments systems, each of which has its own shortcomings, the industry becomes chaotic and repulses lots of potential users

Decentralized services, on the other hand, aren’t easy to launch. Without an API, one can’t standardize the trading of assets from different games. WAX uses blockchain to decentralized the existing market of OPSkins, and moves the trading to the p2p model. We use smart contracts to certify the honesty of all transactions. Sellers would easily create their stores and even choose who to trade with.

FL: You’ve decided to call your nodes ‘guilds’ and pegged each of them to a particular game or server. What’s that all about?

Malcolm Cassel: People are social creatures. Notwithstanding any anonymity offered by the internet, multiplayer games are based on social aspects of gaming. One can go through a certain fraction of an MPG on their own, but important episodes require group action. Some groups gather for a short while, for instance to do in a boss. However, there are long-term groups called guilds or clans. Those groups are for like-minded people who move towards the same in-game goal together.

We decided it would be reasonable to use the same model in WAX. Guilds on the platform would vote for games they wish to support. Users will choose which guilds to join. Each game can be supported by an unlimited number of guilds provided there’s a demand. WAX won’t dictate which games to support. It’s up to the community to decide.

FL: Do you expect blockchain to change the face of gaming? How fast can it happen?

Malcolm Cassel: eSports is a perfect match for tokenization. We’re confident that tokenization and utilization of smart contracts in gaming aren’t just possible, they’re inevitable. Some experts believe that all in-game transactions would use cryptocurrency in the future. But why can’t we use bitcoin or ethereum for that purpose? The answer is that both of them don’t fit the specific demands of the videogames market.

The gaming industry is more about microtransactions. In bitcoin and ethereum, transactions take a long time and are quite expensive. Second, we shouldn’t forget about some technological control. Bitcoin is governed by user consensus and we can’t predict the way it would change in the future. Ethereum is controlled by Ethereum Foundation. WAX needs technological independence to create a blockchain that meets all demands of the market.